The Christ Impulse and the Development of the Ego-Consciousness

Schmidt Number: S-2189

On-line since: 4th July, 2002

LECTURE 5.

Berlin, 9th March, 1910.

CORRESPONDENCES BETWEEN THE MICROCOSM AND THE MACROCOSM

Our lecture to-day will consist of a kind of summing up of all we have
heard in the course of the various lectures given here this winter,
which may be taken as a continuation of the lectures on St. Luke's and
St. Matthew's Gospels and of what was given here with reference to the
lectures on St. John's Gospel which I gave in Stockholm. From the way
in which these lectures were given, it will be clear that there never
was any question in a narrow sense of explaining the Gospels, but
rather that from the truths which in the first place are truths in
themselves and as such can be found in the Gospels if rightly
understood, light can be thrown in different ways upon other riddles
of life.

When we go back beyond the founding of Christianity, we find two
different kinds of Initiation: that of the North, described in more
detail in the above-mentioned Stockholm Lectures, and that of the
South, the chief characteristic of which is its connection with the
Egyptian methods of Initiation. In the world of the ancients there
were two different methods by which they could penetrate into the
Spiritual world. In old Egypt a candidate for initiation had to
descend into the depths of his own soul, beyond all that plays its
part in the ordinary soul-life, as thinking, feeling and willing, and
the like. There he found that from which the soul itself came forth:
the divine Spiritual life of the world. A descent beneath those
regions of the soul which are illuminated and permeated by the Ego,
was the essential point in the Egyptian, or indeed, in any southern
Initiation. In the Northern Initiation, on the other hand, the object
striven for was that man should come out of himself, and expand into
the phenomena of the world in a state of ecstasy. This was especially
the case in the Germanic Druidic Mysteries and those of the Trotten.
We heard how these two kinds of Initiation were combined in one
stream, in what we call the Christian Initiation, and how this
represented a higher unity combining the ecstatic Initiation of the
North with the mystical contraction of the South. This gives an
indication of a deeper foundation of cosmic Mysteries, permeating all
existence. In reality this is in itself as great and mighty a fact as
the fusion of the two different forms of Initiation of ancient times
into the one single form of Christian Initiation; it is an example of
a great and still more comprehensive law permeating all human
existence, and also interwoven in the existence of all the outer
world-phenomena, in so far as these are known to man. Everywhere we
find ourselves confronted by opposites, by two parts of a duality. The
Northern and Southern initiations offer one example of two opposite
sides — polarities, as we might call them — that confront us
in the life of the world. The other, the Christian initiation —
in which these two forms of initiation flow together and as it were
celebrate a Spiritual marriage — is an example of how opposites,
dualities of any sort, reunite. This takes place without cessation;
unities are always separating into dualities for the purpose of
furthering evolution, while dualities unite again, and once more form
unities. We can point externally to one great and mighty fact,
extending beyond human evolution, which is an example of this division
of unity into a duality, and of the streaming back of the two into
one.

We have often thrown light on the Lemurian Epoch, which experienced,
among other things, that great fact in the evolution of the world, the
separation of the Moon from our Earth. That epoch also saw the first
beginnings of that which in the present day sense of man's
development, we may call the two opposites: man and woman; whereas in
the ages preceding that of Lemuria we should only find unity of sex.
There was an original unity, which separated into man and woman. We
have already indicated, moreover, that in a future age the two sexes
will once more become one, that the duality will again become a unity,
a unity will come forth from a duality. That is the external
indication of a far-reaching series of facts connected with the
relation of two to one, or one to two.

What we thus meet with in the development of mankind is actually the
expression, the image, of a still greater cosmic polarity rooted in a
unity; greater than the example in our present-world life, of the two
that in a distant future will be fused into one. It is necessary that
we should take every one of the thoughts given us by Spiritual Science
in its full depths, not allowing ourselves to form a habit of taking
such thoughts in the same superficial way as other thoughts and
conceptions which prevail in the world to-day, and which our present
civilisation in its hasty and superficial triviality accepts. The
thoughts of Spiritual Science must be taken as earnestly as possible.
Therefore such a thought as that often spoken of and which indeed
underlies all our teaching — that man as a little world, as a
microcosm, is born out of the Macrocosm, the great world — must
not simply be taken as an abstract thought, for in its content it is
manifold and infinite. Above all, we must realise that the world
contains more depth than is supposed; and that even when we have
grasped a polarity or a truth in one of its aspects, that does not by
any means signify that we know the last truth about it; rather must we
patiently wait and observe, so that when we know one side of a thing,
we should try to learn what refers to the other side of it.

Man is born out of the whole Cosmos; he must look up it to as to his
Father-Mother, of whom he himself is an image. Yes, man is an image of
the whole world with which he is acquainted, there is nothing in the
being of man which does not in some way relate to what can be found in
the great Cosmos. If we compare man, as seen to-day in the light of
Spiritual Science, with the human forms of early ages, we find among
others one characteristic feature of immense importance for the
understanding of the nature of man. This sign can teach every one of
us that, as regards what we have known about the world, the fact that
some things that have been said are true, is not of sole importance;
there is something else besides, something very different. When a man
has proved the truth of a thing, he has not even then told us what is
of greatest importance in it. For example, there is much truth in what
a trivial natural scientist will tell about the resemblance between
man and the higher mammals. It is an indisputable truth that man has
the same number of bones and muscles, and so on. But after this has
been proved, the last word on the subject has not been said. Man must
learn, through the deepening and inwardness of Spiritual Science, to
acquire a feeling for the value of a particular truth, to sense
whether or no it is important and essential for the elucidation of a
matter. People come along to-day and speaking from their trivial
consciousness, keep on assuring us of the truth of their assertions.
We have no wish to contradict them. But the point is, of what value
are they for the understanding of the world? Now there is a certain
fact — which is undeniably true, and with which everyone is
acquainted, because we meet with it over and over again every day
— the value of which, in its significance to man should be
realised and felt in the right way. That is, the fact that man stands
and walks upright and can gaze out into space around him. Man alone is
capable of that! For we must say that even though the apes look as
though they might possess this power, they have somehow missed it, for
they cannot walk upright. Man is the only being who has achieved this,
and who has succeeded in raising his countenance freely into the space
around him. This fact is immeasurably more important than all those
that a trivial Natural Science tells us as to the position occupied by
man among the animals. What science says is true, but this is of much
greater importance. If we wish to feel the force of this, we must make
ourselves acquainted with the reason why man is a being that walks
upright, a being certainly still bound to the earth, but one who,
through his mental outlook and even through his sense-perceptions,
raised himself into an upright position in space. The reason is that
there is a certain polarity, a duality in the Cosmos, which
corresponds to another duality in man. We can point to a duality in
the universe and to a duality in man, as two opposites, existing in
the microcosm and the macrocosm. The one alluded to in the macrocosm,
in the great world, is that of the Sun to the Earth; and the same
polarity that exists between Sun and Earth exists also in man. It is
that between his head and his hands and feet; between his head and his
limbs. As time goes on these things will be gone into more fully, but
we must in the first place make ourselves acquainted with them and
learn to feel that in a certain respect the head and limbs of man bear
the same relation to each other as the Sun does to the Earth in our
solar System. There are, in fact, in our earth those forces which in
the course of the ages have brought about the whole form and movement
of our hands and feet through certain mysterious forces which bind man
to the Earth; while the forces which have lifted his countenance up in
space, and which have transformed him from a being which gazes on to
the earth to one who can look out into the infinite distances of
cosmic space, — these forces have their seat in the Sun. Anyone
who really has the right feeling will have the same impression when
contemplating the self-evident polarity between man's head and his
limbs, as he will if he turns his attention to the polarity between
the Sun and Earth. This polarity will some day become a unity in the
life of man, just as the Cosmic polarity will do.

Even as the Sun and Earth were once a single being which later divided
into a duality, so will they some day be re-united; and the polarity
in man between head and limbs will also some day become unity,
difficult to imagine as it may seem to the man of to-day, who is not
accustomed to such concepts.

We have thus pointed to a polarity in man and to its correspondence in
the universe. There are, however, other polarities in man, which also
have their corresponding counterparts in the universe. As regards the
polarity between the head and limbs, all human beings on the earth are
alike. It exists equally in man and woman. In this respect there is no
difference between them; for every other polarity, for example that in
the configuration of the soul, is not affected by this. If there were
no other polarity but that existing between the microcosm and
macrocosm, man and woman would be alike, but as it is they form
another polarity in the being of man. Now we may ask: can we not also
find a polarity in the universe corresponding to that between man and
woman in human life? That can be found too. But before we are able to
look for it we must make ourselves to some slight extent acquainted,
in an occult sense, with the polarity between man and woman. In so
doing we must not fall into the error of our materialistic age, which
applies the polarity between man and woman — taking it simply as
a question of sex — to the whole universe. Not only is that a
trivial thing to do, but our learned men are taking a liberty when
they consider that what is found in one domain is applicable to every
other.

The corresponding polarity in the universe to that existing on our
earth between man and woman cannot be called male and female. That
would be nonsense. We must investigate the occult foundations of this
other polarity. The polarity between male and female in our earthly
evolution does not, of course, apply to the ‘human being.’
The human being as such is the same in both man and woman. When we
speak of man and woman we only refer to the configuration of their
physical and etheric bodies. This has nothing to do with the inner
being of man; so that we cannot, in an occult sense, speak as our
materialistic age does. A man and woman each possesses an astral body
and an ego, but the ordinary perception knows nothing of that which
makes a man or woman a human being, it can only speak of them as it
sees them. We are not now speaking of the human being as such in man
or woman, but of what constitutes a man or a woman, which is merely
their outer sheaths. This must be thoroughly understood; for if what
is about to be said were to be applied to the human being as such, it
would be completely wrong. The polarity between man and woman within
the above-named limits is as follows: —

In primeval ages the external human form was totally different. The
present human forms — male and female — have gradually
evolved out of an earlier single form, which had not yet divided into
two. There was formerly a unity, where now there is a polarity,
between man and woman. Now we know too, that the earlier uni-form was
of a finer, more spiritual kind. Only in the course of ages did man
develop a dense material form. When we look back not only do we find
uni-form, but one which was more spiritual than the human form to-day.
We have a primeval human being neither man nor woman, unity as yet
undivided, and finer, more etheric, more spiritual than the later and
more material human being, now separated into man and woman. What was
the cause of the original unity having later developed into Man and
Woman? This cause came about because, when the unity became a duality,
the woman formed a physical body for herself which, if we may say such
a thing, did not completely pass from the earlier form into the normal
material form. The body of woman remained at a more spiritual stage,
it did not fully descend into the material. It has certainly become
dense and material, but at the same time it has retained an earlier,
more spiritual form. Thus a spiritual stage has become material. The
body of woman has, as it were, retained an earlier, more spiritual
form, which has not descended completely into matter. Though it has
become material, it has not done so as regards its form, for it still
retains the form the human being originally possessed. Hence we may
say: Woman is a manifestation of an earlier formation which was
intended to be Spiritual and which, as seen to-day, is actually false,
a maya, an illusion. If we accept the idea of a certain point in
evolution when a spring-forward was made and when matter was
crystallised, we can say: -the woman did not press forward as far as
that point, she crystallised an earlier form. To one who can really
perceive the facts of life, or who learns them through imaginative
cognition, a woman's body is a somewhat truer imprint of the Spiritual
behind it only as far as the head and limbs are concerned, that is to
say, that her head and limbs alone express in their material
appearance, something of a resemblance to their spiritual counterpart.
The Spiritual behind the material form does not look like that,
because the latter is not a true form.

Thus the saying that the world is ‘Maya’ can be applied to
every region of life. It is very easy simply to state that ‘the
world is Maya,’ but a man cannot grasp its meaning, if he does
not go seriously into it, inquiring: ‘In how far are forms
illusion?’ Some are more so and others less. There are those
which at any rate approximately do in their outer semblance express
the Spiritual behind them; these are the head and limbs. Others there
are which are completely wrong and out of drawing; to these belong the
rest of the human body, which is quite out of drawing. When the world
understands these things it will no longer speak as foolishly as it
does to-day, for it will then see that a certain deep, yet more
delicate artistic sense tells us that the female form, with the
exception of the head and limbs, is out of drawing, and if it is to be
artistically represented the defects must be corrected. In better and
more artistic times this was actually done, for no one who really has
an eye for form can fail to observe that in the Venus of Milo the form
has to a certain extent been corrected; but this as a rule is not
noticed.

In this way we have divided the human being into two parts, consisting
of those members of the body which are less of an illusion and those
others that are more so and quite out of drawing. This does not apply
to woman alone; but where a man is concerned the whole thing is
reversed. He is the opposite pole. Just as the female form did not
descend so far as the normal point necessary for rightly expressing
the spirit in matter but crystallised at an earlier stage, so the male
body on the other hand sprang just as far beyond that normal point as
the female form stopped short of it. Thus the male body descended more
deeply than the normal into materiality, and manifests this in its
outer form. It would have quite a different appearance if it had not
sprung beyond the middle point. Only as regards the head and limbs
does the human body even approximately correspond to truth. As regards
the rest of its form we must say that the female body, having reached
a certain point, remained at a standstill; it consolidated before the
waves of material existence broke over it; hence it manifest quite a
different form from that which we should have seen if it had but
waited till it had come in contact with material life before
crystallising. The male body on the other hand plunged too deeply down
and is just as greatly out-of-drawing as that of woman. Thus the
woman's body manifests a distorted form in the Spiritual, while the
man's body is distorted in the material. The true form would be
between the two; it would consist of a happy average of both. Of
course this affects the whole human being in his earth-life, in so far
as he has a physical covering. What I have just said has nothing to do
with the polarity between the head and limbs, it refers to the whole
human being in one incarnation between birth and death. We incarnate
either as man or woman. In so doing we have to take into account that
which is out-of-drawing in the man or woman; but that extends to the
whole human being, and the consequence is that if in one incarnation
one has the body of a woman, the whole of this female body is
influenced by the fact of its having remained behind at an earlier
stage when the form was more pliable. In a male incarnation the whole
physical body is permeated with the effects of having plunged down too
strongly into coarse solid matter. If people had even the smallest
inkling of what it means to think in the spirit, to live in the
spirit, using the physical body only as an instrument, — so that
one does not feel firmly fastened into it, identifying oneself
with it — they would sing psalms about the misery of having to
use a male body in an incarnation, for of course these material
effects have also filtered into the brain. One observes that the forms
of the male brain, through having been deeper into matter, are more
difficult to manage than the more flexible forms of the female brain.
It is truly a more difficult matter to train a male brain for the
ascent into the higher worlds, and to translate the truths into
thoughts, than it is to train a female brain for the same purpose.
‘For this reason it is not surprising to people who think, when a
new conception of the world arises such as that of Spiritual Science,
it is more easily grasped by the more manageable female brain; for it
is more difficult for the male brain, being less pliable and obedient,
to free itself from certain thoughts which it has absorbed. Hence
Spiritual Science will not find an easy acceptance amongst the men who
are to-day the leaders of culture and of the cultured ideas prevalent
in our day. We must realise how awkward an instrument is the brain of
a learned man to-day, not only for the acceptance of Spiritual
Science, but also for thinking along those lines. But we must not look
at these things in a wrong way and draw our own conclusions —
rather should we look upon it as all the more significant that there
are so many men whose brains are so pliant that they have become
intimately acquainted with Spiritual Science.

These things can at first merely be hinted at, but if you allow them
to work on you and then reflect over them, you will find immense
perspective opening out regarding the life of man.

When we think of human life in its two opposites of man and woman, we
are confronted with two forms, one that has remained at a standstill
at an earlier stage, and one which has jumped on beyond the present
stage and which draws into the present a form intended for the future,
but presents it as a caricature. The female has preserved an earlier
form and the male has taken on a later form, but has made it what it
must not be in the future. The male form is incorrect, because it has
brought later conditions of life into an age as yet too early for
them.

Can we find a correspondence in the Cosmos to the polarity between
male and female. Is there anything in the Cosmos which on the one hand
shows us a development which has retained earlier forms and carried
these over into a later age? And are there on the other hand forms
which have transcended a certain stage, thus representing the
caricatured form of a future state? If we bring to mind the concrete
development which we know from the Akashic Records, we may put the
question thus: Is there anything in the Cosmos outside, resembling an
old Moon-existence which would not enter the Earth-existence, but
retained from the old Moon something feminine in the Cosmos?

Is there anything which carries into the present time something like
an old Moon existence belonging to an earlier stage? And is there in
the Cosmos anything which has gone beyond a certain stage, and has
condensed and thickened, so that it represents a later condition, a
Jupiter condition?

There is! There is in the Cosmos the same polarity as we have
described between male and female; and that is the polarity between a
Comet and the Moon. If we wish to understand the nature of a Comet,
wandering as it does in cosmic space regardless of the other laws of
the Solar System, we must be clear as to the fact that the Comet
carries the laws belonging to the old Moon-existence into our own.
Those laws it has preserved, and with those it enters our existence.
It has taken on the present substance of the solar-terrestrial system;
but, as regards its motion and its nature, it has remained behind at
that stage of natural law which prevailed in the Solar System when our
earth was still Old Moon. It carries a former condition into a later,
into the present; just as the woman's body carries an earlier
condition into present-day existence. The nature of the Comet is one
part of a polarity, and that of the Moon represents the other pole.
When, in the Lemurian age the Moon evolved out of the Earth, it took
with it certain portions, which had to be removed in order that the
human being as such might develop. The earth was not to become as
dense as it must have become if it had retained the Moon within it.
The Moon actually represents a caricature of the Jupiter-condition.
Just as a fresh ripe fruit is found in a petrified state in a
stalactite, so the Moon in its configuration transcended the middle
form, as has the male form of the human being. Exactly the same
polarity that we find in human life between the male and the female,
we can find in the Cosmos between the natures of Moon and Comets.

Thus are these things connected: as sun to earth, so head to limbs,
— as Moon to Comet, so man to woman in the human being. Here
again we must not go home and say: — well, now, we have some nice
polarities to observe! — We must take these things very seriously
and remember that on other occasions I said something more besides
this. We must take into consideration the fact that a man is only male
as regards his physical body, for as regards his etheric body he is
female; and the woman on the other hand is only female in her physical
body. A woman can only be said to be female as far as her physical
body is concerned and that can be said of the etheric body of a man;
so that the relation of the etheric body of a man to the etheric body
of a woman is as that of Comet to Moon. If you like you may perhaps
say: this makes everything confused again! But these things are so. In
a culture which has created its ideas with a densified brain, those
same ideas tend to create dense outlines which cannot be modified, so
that when ideas are once formed they must be held on to. But the
spirit does not admit of this. That is mobile, and when we form ideas,
we must keep them plastic. So we must apply what has just been said as
to the relation of the Moon and Comets to Man and Woman, to the male
in the woman and the female in the man. It applies to the male and
female elements in the human being but not to man and woman as we meet
them externally.

We have now found some extremely interesting connections between the
development of the human being and that of the Cosmos. Of course, as I
have already observed: Those who sit in the high places of ‘true
scientific observation’ will consider what has just been put
forward about the Comet and the Moon, as utterly wild and absurd. That
cannot be helped. They do not desire to investigate the truth. But on
the ground of Spiritual Science, we can build a bridge between that
which comes from the Spiritual and what is seen on the physical plane.
Those others will not do this.

In the year 1906, during the Congress in Paris, I called attention to
the fact that Spiritual investigation from its knowledge of the nature
of Comets, was able to say: As the combinations of carbon and hydrogen
play the same part on our earth as did the combinations of carbon and
nitrogen (cyanogen) on the Old Moon, the cometary life must contain
cyanogen compounds, — combinations of carbon and nitrogen. Those
persons who have followed these things attentively will remember this.
Our Spiritual Science, therefore, some time ago announced that the
cometary nature must contain cyanogen in some form. During the last
few weeks this fact has been mentioned in all the newspapers as an
external fact discovered by spectro-analysis. This is only one case
— hundreds of others could be quoted — in which Spiritual
investigation builds bridges for the facts of external research. In
this case spectro-analysis asserts what Spiritual Science stated years
before. The results of external materialistic investigation never
contradict those of Spiritual research. We may depend upon statements
such as the above-mentioned, when those who sit in the high places of
true science constantly point to the external facts. Only we must not
confuse these facts with the limited conclusions which people draw for
themselves. If everything in Natural Science to-day was really a fact,
Natural Science would greatly contradict Spiritual Science; but their
facts are no facts, only the corrupt conceptions of those who, through
the conditions prevailing in our age, are called upon to deal with
such matters.

Now, having brought before our minds the polarity to be found in human
life as well as in the Cosmos, we may ask: What then is brought forth
from the Universe as a result of this?

It is rather difficult to describe in a somewhat short time the
immensity underlying such a fact. You will allow me, therefore, by way
of example, to describe the life of man as it runs its course seen
externally. First of all, we see something of which we may say, it
pursues its course like the life of a good citizen, from day to day.
He gets up in the morning, eats his breakfast and completes the rest
of the day in accordance with the usual rules. There are certain
events, however, which can intervene in a man's life at one fell
swoop, and may bring about changes in the day's course. Take the case
of a man and wife living for a while the life of good citizens with
but little variety in the usual programme of their day, till something
occurs which actually causes a leap in the ordinary external life of
people in such circumstances. When a new human being incarnates, and
enters life as a citizen of the world, the event causes a leap, a
great change in the ordinary process of everyday life. When a new
citizen of the world comes on the horizon of man and wife, something
actually occurs which gives the whole family connection a new form. I
brought this forward as an example by means of which we can gain some
little understanding of the deep occult background of cometary life.
In the Cosmos too, life goes on from day to day, from year to year
— like the life of the good citizen — one day is like
another; the Sun rises and sets, the plants blossom in spring, and
wither away in autumn, and when there is rain or sunshine or hail or
the like, these correspond to such events in ordinary life as, for
instance, when instead of our ordinary five o'clock tea, we have a
little party. We see these things happening as a matter of course. All
this hangs together with the laws underlying the movements of Sun,
earth, and so on, and the way in which these continue day by day and
year by year. Into this regular process, there intervenes the rarer,
yet in a certain respect recurrent, appearances of the comets. They
come upon the process of Cosmic happenings like a new citizen entering
the horizon of man and wife. Through the appearance of a comet in the
cosmos, something is actually brought about in the life of humanity
which could not occur in the ordinary process of life. If evolution is
to continue, there must be, not only that which repeats itself day by
day, but something new must be introduced into it. Just as something
quite special enters the life of a family with the birth of a new
earth-citizen, so something quite different enters the progress of the
human race on earth through the appearance of a comet, which breaks
through the ordinary process of cosmic existence. It is actually as
though something new were born, when a comet appears.

One who can investigate these things spiritually is able to indicate
quite definitely the different functions of the separate comets, and
how each one has to introduce something spiritually new into the
world. Thus Halley's comet is one of those which, in its periodic
appearances, always introduces something specially new into the life
of man. Whereas otherwise things recur in the ordinary way, this comet
brings about a new birth in human inner life and culture. I can only
characterise what I mean, by referring to the three last appearances
of Halley's comet, in the years 1759, 1835, and the one we are now
expecting. What are the tasks of these three appearances? Other comets
have other tasks. New births in the universe are not always to be
greeted with the same joy as the birth of a young citizen into a
family. All sorts are born into the universe; those that bring
humanity forward as well as those that drive it back. Now the
appearance of Halley's comet, or what it signifies spiritually for the
further evolution of humanity, is connected with that which humanity
had to absorb out of the Cosmos at the various periods of Kali-Yuga in
order that thought should descend more and more into materiality. With
every new appearance of this comet a new impulse was born, to drive
humanity further away from a spiritual cosmic conception by the Ego,
and to urge it to grasp the world in a more materialistic way. This
does not mean a descent into matter, but rather the driving of that
Spiritual substance which the human Ego should draw from the universe
for its Spiritual existence, down into the sphere of materialistic
conception. All those conceptions of the second half of the 18th
century, which are called shallow and superficial and which Goethe so
ridiculed in his Truth and Poetry and which found their
exponent for instance in Holbach's Systeme de la Nature, are
understood in their cosmic sense through the appearance of Halley's
comet in the year 1759. The commonplace materialistical literature of
the second third of the 19th century was preceded by the appearance of
that comet in 1835. Things that take place microcosmically on the
earth are macrocosmically connected with events of the great world. A
new impulse towards materialism was again given by the appearance of
Halley's comet in 1835. Buchner, Vogt and Moleschott are examples of
those who were influenced on the earth by what appeared with Halley's
comet, as a mighty sign from the Cosmos. We are now to be confronted
in the near future — for humanity must be tested, must rise out
of itself, must feel the resistance to Spirituality so that it may
unfold all the more forces for its re-ascent — we shall be
confronted with the forces which the new appearance of this comet will
send forth from the universe, forces which may lead humanity down into
a still more arid and dreadful materialism. Something may be born,
which even the most arid and driest thoughts of the Buchner school
could not have imagined. but this possibility is a necessity, for only
if man overcomes the opposing forces can he acquire the strong force
able to lead him up again.

If we bear this in mind, we shall then encounter in the right way what
we call ‘Signs from the Heavens.’ This is really a fact;
though what I have said must not be taken in a superstitious sense, as
though God were pointing with a wand from Heaven to show men what they
have to do! The approaching appearance of Halley's comet is one of
these signs, and notice should be taken of it. For a mighty ascending
impulse must follow it that we may rise from the depths of materialism
into which we have sunk, into Spirituality. Just as we are given the
possibility of being swamped in materialism, we are also given the
chance to ascend into clearer, spiritual heights.

It was clearly and distinctly indicated in the last lectures that
during the first half of the 20th century an etheric clairvoyance will
develop in a few single individuals, as a natural capacity. In order
that man may not sink more deeply into the materialism indicated by
the present sign of 1910, those who have understanding of Spiritual
Science have the possibility of developing those forces in the human
soul which can lead man beyond materialism. If a man understands these
forces, they will teach him how he may himself see the etheric nature
of Christ. We are living at an important crossing-point, when men will
be taught, even by signs from heaven, that in one direction the path
will lead deeper into the mire, while the other path leads to the
development in themselves of the forces which, at the conclusion of
Kali-Yuga, will lead to etheric clairvoyance. The cry of John the
Baptist: ‘Change the disposition of your souls,’ applies to
us to-day! This may really be said. Just as on the one hand we are
given the possibility of perishing in the materialistic morass, on the
other it is possible, through the Sun reaching a certain point in the
Constellation of Pisces at the Vernal Equinox, that a certain
etheric clairvoyance may be acquired. For the spiritual ascent there
are also signs, to show us how the forces come from the Cosmos. If a
man is a student of Spiritual Science he will of necessity grow to
understand this decision; if he does not, that means that he has not
understood Spiritual Science aright. We must pass through the test
submitted to us by the sign in the Heavens which we now recognise to
be the appearance of Halley's Comet.

Let us now picture the vision of Christ, as it will appear to the
first fore-runners during the next 2,500 years, and as it appeared to
Paul on the way to Damascus. Man will ascend to a cognition of the
spiritual world and will see the physical world permeated by a new
‘country,’ or new realm. Man's physical environment will
present a totally different aspect in the course of the next 2,500
years, through the addition of an etheric realm, which indeed is
already here now, but which he will learn to perceive. This etheric
sphere is even now spread out before the eyes of those who have
carried their esoteric training as far as ‘Illumination’
— as was the case with the Initiates even in Kali-Yuga. That
which men will see more and more in the future is visible in its
greatest heights to the Initiates. The Initiate draws from thence at
repeated intervals, the forces he requires. When he has to carry out
some special work, he draws his forces from those realms within the
earth's circuit which are visible to him, but which can only be seen
by those who have the vision. It will help us to understand this, when
we know that a part of that land from which the Initiate drew his
forces during Kali-Yuga, will be thrown open to a great part of
humanity during the next 2,500 years. Formerly, in the days of
primeval clairvoyance, man, though then without the strong
Ego-consciousness, could see into the Spiritual world — and in a
way he saw more or less what he will see now, — but he will now
enter it with his newly acquired self-consciousness. At that time he
saw it in dream-like ecstatic conditions, or by looking into his own
soul. That world which during Kali-Yuga became physical was then open
to man's gaze. Hence the traditions, which have preserved
recollections of the old clairvoyance, tell us of an unknown
Fairy-Land which has now disappeared from sight. There are wonderful
documents in Eastern literature full of a peculiar tragical
enchantment, and telling us that
at one time it was possible for human
beings to travel to a land where the Spiritual flowed into the
physical. It is that Land from whence at certain times the Initiates
— and at all times the Bodhisattvas — drew fresh forces. The
Eastern writings speak with deep sorrow of that land, asking:
‘Where is it? We are told the names of places, paths are named;
but the Land itself is concealed, even from those most initiated among
the Lamas of Thibet!’ Only to the highest Initiates is it
accessible. But it is always stated that some day this Land will
return to earth. That is true; it will return to earth! And the guide
thereto will be He Whom men will see, when, through the vision of the
Event of Damascus, they reach the Land of Shamballa.
‘Shamballa’ — for so this Land is called — has
withdrawn from the sight of man. It can only be entered to-day by
those who, as Initiates, go there from time to time to be
strengthened. The old forces can no longer lead man thither. That is
why Eastern literature speaks with such tragic despair of the vanished
Land of Shamballa. But the Christ-Event, which will be vouchsafed to
man in this century through his newly-awakened faculties, will bring
back the Fairy-Land of Shamballa, which through the whole of Kali-Yuga
could only be known to the Initiates.

Thus humanity is now called upon to make a decision, whether it shall
allow itself, through what comes with the Halley Comet, to be lead
down into a darkness even lower than that of Kali-Yuga, or whether
through an understanding developed by Anthroposophy it shall not
neglect to cultivate the new faculties by which it may find the way to
the Land which according to Eastern Literature has disappeared, but
which Christ will once more reveal to mankind; — the Land of
Shamballa. That is the great question of the dividing of the ways:
either to go down or to go up. Either to go down into something which,
as a Cosmic-Kamaloka lies still deeper down than Kali-Yuga, or to work
for that which will enable man to enter that realm, which is really
alluded to under the name of Shamballa.